Saturday, February 9, 2013

Spooky Mormon Hell Dream

Nothing
new in terms of the basic picture of Mormonism presented in "The Book
of Mormon: The Musical." We already saw it in the "Mormon episode" of South Park. Those Mormons, they believe in some wacky, crazy shit! But they sure are nice. Really amazingly nice!

Spoiler
alert! If you haven't seen "The Book of Mormon: The Musical" yet, and
you don't want any major plot revelations before seeing it yourself,
don't read any further!

In
the play, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham arrive in Uganda with high
hopes of bringing souls to Christ. Elder Price is a superstar missionary
whom everyone expects to change the world, while his companion, Elder
Cunningham, is a flunky who has a tendency to tell tall tales, and who's
never even read the Book of Mormon. Confronted with the poverty,
disease and violence of life in Uganda, however, it is superstar
missionary Elder Price who gets discouraged and abandons his post. Elder
Cunningham stays behind, only to discover that the missionaries'
enthusiasm and faith has rubbed off on one young Ugandan woman in the
village named Nabulungi. Nabulungi persuades the other villagers that
perhaps Mormonism does have some unique power that can help them solve
their problems and find a new promised land in "Salt Lake City."

Abandoned by his more doctrinally
adept companion Elder Price, Elder Cunningham, who knows little to
nothing about the Book of Mormon or about LDS Church history, improvises
and preaches a gospel to the Ugandans that bears little to no
resemblance to the official Mormon gospel. The Ugandans nevertheless
find his message inspiring, and convert en masse to the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When the local warlord shows up,
threatening to destroy the entire village, their new found faith gives
them the courage to stand up and drive the villains away.
Unfortunately, when the mission president learns of the fabrications
that Elder Cunningham has used to convert the Ugandan Saints, he orders
all the missionaries home in shame. But Elder Price, who had returned
feeling guilty about his earlier abandonment of his mission post (after
having a "spooky Mormon hell dream"), decides that doctrinal orthodoxy
doesn't matter any more. What matters is that the faith and enthusiasm
of the missionaries made a difference in the lives of the Ugandans.
Elder Price persuades the missionaries to stay behind and continue to
work to improve the lives of their converts. The musical ends with the
missionaries and the converted Ugandans joining together to preach a new
gospel based on the fabrications of Elder Cunningham that had so
inspired them.

I have to say there is much about this musical I loved.
There were silly -- almost ridiculous -- inaccuracies slipped in,
perhaps, to deliberately signal that this was a work of fiction. Mormon
missionaries get their mission assignments long before arriving in the
Missionary Training Center, and they don't spend their entire two years
with one companion. Oh, and, for the record, though Mormons are often
driven by terrifying guilt, they really don't believe in the classical
Christian hell, filled with sulfur and brimstone and ruled by a red
Devil with horns and bat wings and a pitchfork. And I'm yet ever to
hear a single Mormon utter the phrase "Praise Christ!" Yeesh.

But much of the texture of missionary
life felt realistic to me. The emotional and spiritual bond between
missionary companions is powerful and life-changing -- at least my relationships with my companions were. There are missionaries obsessed with personal glory, as well as missionaries whose humility and desire to do what's right outweigh their desire for adulation. The mission field is rife with missionaries who get burned out and discouraged and who give up, as well as missionaries whose faith spurs them to remarkable acts of sacrifice and courage. And Mormon missionaries do enter the mission field notoriously naive about the culture of the people they are sent there to convert, but
they also usually learn to deeply love the people, and are often both
challenged and transformed by that love. Oh, and, for what it's worth,
the play taps realistically into the "gay Mormon moment" by including a
Mormon missionary character who is gay, and who deals with it by just
"turning it off."

An implicit message in the musical is
that belief is almost always ridiculous, but the power of belief can
still make the world a better place, if we remain humble and are willing
to put ourselves on the line for the welfare of others. This is not a bad message. It actually resonates with the very scriptural notion that "faith without works is dead." I like the way the play presents the real-life faith struggle of what
happens when prayers aren't answered the way we like them to be. I
couldn't help but be moved by the scene where Mormon elders and
converted villagers gather together dressed in white at the waters of
baptism. Mormons are portrayed as hopelessly naive, but Mormons
will like the fact that the play generally gives them the benefit of a
doubt at least as to their motives, which are portrayed as unfailingly
well meaning. The message in the musical that is least likely to sit
well with most Mormons, however, is the idea that it doesn't matter what we believe, so long as our belief is fervent and well-intentioned.

I'm pretty sure I don't actually
believe that at all; what we believe really does matter. And Mormons
have rational reasons for believing that God is real, and that Joseph Smith did speak to him, and that the books of scripture that inspire us are
true. There are aspects of our faith that we all wrestle with
(including the racist elements in the Book of Mormon), and Mormons are
concerned about objective validation of their beliefs. I think Matt
Stone and Trey Parker do Mormons injustice by acting as if the only ways
to believe in that wacky Joseph Smith, and that weird Book of Mormon is
either to take everything at face value and never to question anything -- to "just turn [doubt] off" -- or to take it all as mere metaphor. In my mind, doctrinaire scientific rationalism fails because it doesn't take religious experience seriously, and Mormonism is powerful as a faith because it does. The universe is more complex than South Park makes it out to be.

All
the same, I liked the musical. Mormons who watch it may have to bring
ear-stoppers for all the profanity (though I have to admit, the
musical's portrayal of Mormon phobias about profanity is pretty dang
funny). The play is not anti-Mormon, though it presents a view of
Mormonism that is colored by the unbelief of its creators. Ultimately,
if Matt Stone and Trey Parker are willing to grant Mormons the benefit
of a doubt as to their motives, I'm willing to return the favor.

And so, apparently, is the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which took out three full-page ads in
the playbill of the Minneapolis show, encouraging play attendees to
"read the book" now that they'd "seen the play," proving the play's
point that if Mormons really do one thing very well, it is to "believe."

7 comments:

I have only listened to the cast recording of the Book of Mormon musical. But what strikes me as its main narrative genius is that it takes the Joseph Smith story to its logical conclusion.

Joseph Smith found that the received Christian tradition of his time did not answer many of the questions and concerns people had then. So (to some minds) he fabricated some things that were not "true" in a strict sense but which inspired an enormous number of people and gave new meaning to their lives.

So looking to the future, as Joseph Smith's teachings calcify and become out of touch in the modern world, what happens? A new Elder comes along and fabricates, just as Joseph Smith did. The cycle continues!

To my mind, Parker and Stone---in the context of a fun, silly musical---have made a profound observation about belief generally and Mormonism in particular.

Great review. I have listened to the songs and read about the story and am looking forward to seeing the show next week. I'm so glad you saw it because you are my Mormon compass. As a marketing person I'm thinking if I worked for the Mormon church I would be thinking there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Edward - I suppose you can take it to the Fawn Brody-esque logical conclusion that one "pious fraud" deserves another. Or you could also follow it to the logical conclusion built into the structure of Mormonism: that "on-going revelation" is not a principle religion can afford to go without.

Mary - If there's one religion that's had to deal with bad press, it's the Mormons.

I don't know why, but the main "inaccuracy" that drove me nuts was the "Praise Jesus" thing. That just made me crazy when they said it. I still can't figure out why it annoys me so much, but it does. Was anyone else extremely uncomfortable throughout Hasa Diga Eebowai? I clapped any everything, but I just cringed (and laughed).

LOVED the play.Most uncomfortable moment for me was (surprisingly) during I Believe. I had heard the song a million times, but the thing that caught me off guard was the way the audience laughed at things that Mormons really believe. People I love completely buy into the beliefs he lists in that song... I felt like a big sister, "I am allowed to laugh at those beliefs, but YOU are not."

I sobbed during the reprise of Hasa Diga. They nailed the feeling of sadness and betrayal that I felt towards the church once...

"Praise Christ" annoyed me when I just heard it, but it helped me relax a little when I saw the show. Maybe it was because of your reasons: So over the top fictional that I didn't feel like they were making fun of MY family any more. I don't know.

"Praise Christ" pretty much was the big giveaway (for those who've had any significant exposure to Mormonism) that this play is definitely set in the land of South Park, and not in real-world Mormon culture.

The "Hasa Diga" thing was crude, but expressing anger and frustration to God has a long and venerable history in the Judeo-Christian tradition... So it didn't bug me as much as it may have bugged some others. Jen, I agree that when the Ugandans sing that reprise to express their anger at being let down by the Church, it takes on special poignancy (for me at least).

The "I believe" song goes right to the heart of my criticism of the play... It definitely portrays belief as mindlessly adhering to a bunch of senseless intellectual propositions. It doesn't capture any of the nuance of Mormon understanding of belief (such as what you find in Alma 32). But then... If you're looking for theological depth, it's pretty insane to go looking for it in "The Book of Mormon: The Musical."